Heritage tourism effort gains momentum

Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area took another step closer to becoming a reality last week.

Terry Ramsey, who is on the steering committee for the Heritage Area, told the I.M.P.A.C.T. Nevada tourism board Monday night that Judy Billings hand delivered the final copy of the management plan for the Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area to the U.S. Department of the Interior last week for its Official Review by the National Park Service. The Official Review is to be sure the plan meets all of the requirements of the law passed by Congress establishing the National Heritage Area.

Ramsey, who is the Bushwhacker Museum coordinator, said that the museum allows her to take unpaid time-off to work on the Heritage Area. She said that the tourism board pays her travel expenses to attend the steering committee meetings, which are held in different towns around the Heritage Area.

Billings, of Lawrence, Kan., is the treasurer for the board of trustees for the Heritage Area.

"I look for it to be accepted with no problem; and if there is a problem, it will only require little tweaks," Ramsey said.

She said that the management plan is really a toolkit for each community in the Heritage Area to use to help tell its own unique story.

Ramsey said that printed copies of the 200 plus page management plan can be purchased for $60. However, a digital copy of the entire plan can be downloaded from the Heritage Area's Web site, www. freedomsfrontier.org. She said the entire plan is quite large and the executive summary, which is smaller, can also be downloaded.

There are currently 49 heritage areas in the U.S., with each one designated by an act of Congress.

According to the National Heritage Area's web site: "For an area to be considered for designation, certain key elements must be present. First and foremost, the landscape must have nationally distinctive natural, cultural, historic, and scenic resources that, when linked together, tell a unique story about our country."

In the case of the Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area, the story being told is of the border wars that occurred in this area during the Civil War.

This Heritage Area encompasses 41 counties in Missouri and Kansas, making it one of the largest geographically in the country, and tells the story of not only important events that led up to the Civil War, but also of the "area's unique contributions to the country's story of freedom, social values and human rights."

"This area will look at how freedom is continually being redefined," Ramsey said.

She told the board that when the plan gets final approval, the Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area will be able to tap into $10 million that has been appropriated for the promotion of the area through the National Parks Service.

She said that recently Heritage Areas have been able to leverage the federal money to generate $8 of private money for each $1 of federal money.

At that rate she said this Heritage Area could have up to $80 million to spend on promoting the area.

"My job is to tell the Vernon County story," Ramsey said.

She told the board that the Bushwhacker Museum has become well known to the state of Missouri.

"When the state needs information on guerrilla war they contact the Bushwhacker Museum," she said.

As part of the activities associated with the Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area and the upcoming sesquicentennial of the Civil War Ramsey said there will be a "Burning of Nevada interpretive panel on the west lawn of the Vernon County Courthouse. The panel is being sponsored by the Tourism Board and Metz Bank.

She said that plans are also under way to have a series of programs of "Civil Discourse" to provide a platform for civilized discussion of what happened and the results of the Civil War. These programs will done at libraries and schools.

Ramsey said that there is a lot of interest in the Civil War in Great Britain and that state spends money marketing the state to Britain.

As part of the she said Lindsey Sutton, a travel writer from England, recently visited the Museum looking for information on the Civil War.

In other business Cat McGrath-Farmer told the board that Nevada was chosen as the fifth place town, out of the five towns visited by the Hemmings Challenge, which will get them $1,500.

Brent Coursey told the board that there are four new billboards in place now, marketing Nevada on area highways, with the slogan "Hunting for a Place to Land? Nevada, Missouri," complete with a 10-foot duck landing on a lake.

Coursey said that the signs are located near Bronson, Kan., Sheldon, southbound U.S. Highway 71 near Harrisonville at the Missouri Route 7 exit and just east of Nevada on U.S. Highway 54.

"We got four boards for the price of the two we had before," he said.

The four billboards will cost about $8,000 for a one year contract.